Springfield Regional Opera has some new leaders

Sean Spyres with Springfield Regional Opera has been promoted to office manager and education director. In this May 2017 photo, he sang onstage with a vaudeville-style performance sponsored by the opera.(Photo11: Photos courtesy Dean Curtis/Springfield Regional Opera)

Christopher Koch, a conductor and Drury University professor who serves as the opera's music director, was recently appointed to a second role, executive director.

Christopher Koch

Jim Davidson was appointed chorus master of the opera. A chorus master trains opera members who sing in unison, supporting the headlining solo performers.

Davidson serves as Drury's director of choral activities, artistic director of the Boys Choirs of Springfield, executive director of the Springfield-Drury Girls Choirs and as the assistant director of music ministries at First and Calvary Presbyterian Church.

Sean Spyres, who previously served as an administrator with the opera, has been named office manager and education director. Spyres has also taught music in public schools and worked as a professional opera singer.

In the news release, officials said Springfield Regional Opera is "enjoying a dynamic renaissance."

Jim Davidson(Photo11: Springfield Regional Opera)

Artistic director Michael Spyres, an international opera singer who joined Springfield Regional Opera after it began a turnaround in June 2015, praised his fellow artists and performers in the release. (Michael Spyres and Sean Spyres are brothers.)

"I’m repeatedly astonished," Michael Spyres said, "every time I return to Springfield and hear our local civic orchestra — much less the SRO orchestra — performing with greater skill and intensity than many of the full-time professional opera orchestras I encounter around the world."

Mary Aiken, who recently assumed the presidency of the opera's board of directors from her predecessor, Cindy Curtis, noted that the opera's professionals have a "collaborative spirit that is so critical for all the arts."

"We have an incredible team," she said in the news release. "(They) not only bring artistic vision and integrity to our community, but are genuinely invested in supporting each other, the opera, and other arts organizations in the Ozarks."

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Michael Spyres sings during the Springfield Regional Opera's Jazz Aria fundraiser at The DoubleTree hotel in Springfield on March 12, 2016.(Photo11: Bruce E. Stidham/For the News-Leader)

The opera's fortunes have improved since the appointment of Michael Spyres, who frequently sings at globally known opera houses such as the Lyric Opera of Chicago and the Royal Opera House in London, among others in North America and Europe.

As the News-Leader reported in March 2016, the opera's finances went through a rough patch in recent years, ending fiscal 2014 with an operating loss of $10,665.

After fiscal 2015 — the most recent year with available data — the opera's ledger returned to the black to the tune of $26,700, according to documents that the opera must file with the IRS.

In their news release, opera officials singled out this performance of "Otello," which requires hundreds of singers.

"'Otello' is a monster work that is rarely performed," Sean Spyres said in a Friday email to the News-Leader.

Spyres said Springfield's "Otello" drew an international opera agent, London-based Robert Gilder, likely because it took moxie for a relatively small opera company to put on such difficult performance. Spyres said Gilder was aware of Michael Sypres and at least one of the performers who sang in "Otello," Jennifer Forni.